On Fri, 4 May 2012 10:21:29 -0400, "Wild_Bill"
wrote:

Yeah, not really.. but I wanted to cut a section of brass rod to create 3
straight flutes, so I chucked a Dremel flexshaft handpiece in the lathe's
3-jaw and mounted the rod on the toolpost so I could advance the rod into
the cutter in small but precise passes (using the compound feedscrew for
passes and the crossfeed to increase the depth).
The Dremel rotary tool motor was providing the high RPM.

This little sideways milling method was much more precise than any handheld
work I could've done.

For indexing the rod around at 120 degrees of rotation for the 3 cuts, I
used a small drill chuck secured to the back end of the rod (sticking out
past the back side of the turret toolpost) and used the 3 chuck key holes as
index locations.

Definitely sufficient for TLAR work.

That's clever, but keep in mind that it's often done the other way
around, using the lathe's bull gear as a fixed-value indexer. If your
bull gear has an appropriate number of teeth you usually can get a
variety of symmetrical steps around a circle.

I've used my South Bend to do that kind of thing several times. I hold
the Dremel, or my old industrial-grade B&D die grinder, mounted in my
milling attachment, although it could be rigged in the toolpost.

The clever Brit hobbyists have sometimes modified their lathes with a
worm gear driving the bull gear to get pretty versatile indexing.

--
Ed Huntress